


bees and goats and butterflies

by Teaotter



Category: Leverage
Genre: Altered Mental States, Cuddling & Snuggling, Drugs, Gen, OT3, Platonic Cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-30 01:17:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3917791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teaotter/pseuds/Teaotter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Parker wants to cuddle. She is also high. These things are more or less related.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bees and goats and butterflies

**Author's Note:**

> I started with 'take your shoes off in the back of my van' ... and then ended up someplace else entirely. Prompts are strange that way.

Parker drapes herself more comfortably across the warmth of Eliot’s lap, stretching out until she can reach both arms of the couch. She never realized before how smooth the leather could be against her skin. She rubs the arch of her bare foot against the grain of the leather, back and forth, back and forth, until the sole buzzes happily. Like little happy bees fluttering their wings all along the arch of her foot.

Everyone said drugs felt good, but no one said they felt this good. Parker would feel cheated for all the years she never did this, but she’s too busy enjoying it now.

The body beneath hers on the couch shifts suddenly, jeans and sweatshirt and warm Eliot-smell that Parker doesn’t want to lose, no matter how fun the bees in the couch are. Parker wraps an arm around his broad shoulders and hangs on until he settles in a new position. 

“Tell me again why we can’t just take her home until the drugs wear off?” Eliot says. He’s trying to sound gruff and angry – like one of the billy goats! Parker realizes, and maybe they were Eliot goats? – but he doesn’t mean it. The words vibrate from his ribs to hers, warm and friendly.

“Because none of us know where she lives.” Hardison is laughing somewhere nearby, warm friendly happy laughter, but Parker doesn’t need to turn to look. She can feel his voice just fine from here.

“I know.” Parker wonders if the vibrations of her voice feel friendly to Eliot. She hopes they do. She starts humming at different pitches, trying to find one that makes him relax.

“You could tell us?” Hardison is still laughing. It tickles along the edge of her ear and into her brain. More bees? No, this is more like butterflies, Parker decides.

“Mmmmmmm.” Parker doesn’t remember why she’s humming, but it makes her bones wiggle all the way down to her toes. Oh, wait, Hardison asked her a question. “Nope. It’s a secret.”

The word ‘secret’ rattles around in her head like a drumbeat, and Parker starts tapping it into Eliot’s shoulder and giggling. She giggles harder when he sighs underneath her.

“Maybe you could stop poking me?”

“Sure.” Parker stops tapping on his shoulder and starts rubbing her cheek there instead to catch the beats as they rebound. But she gets distracted by the weave of his sweatshirt. It’s so soft and velvety against her face, she wants to feel it more. She twists her arms over her head briefly --

Eliot shifts again, but Parker can feel the way his muscles flex, and she knows how to bend with them so she doesn’t lose her balance --

\-- and drops her shirt off the side of the couch.

“Dammit, Parker, I told you to keep your clothes on!”

Hardison is laughing again, and it feels just as good tickling along the skin of her back as it did in her ear. Butterflies that smell like caramel corn, Parker decides. She shakes her hair out over her shoulders just to feel the ends sweep across her skin.

“I did,” she says, settling back in against his sweatshirt. Yes, it feels just as soft as it did against her face, only now there’s more of it. It would be better without her bra, but she had promised. “Pretend we’re at the beach.”

Eliot sighs. It lifts her up and lets her down again like riding the swell of a wave. So it doesn’t make any sense when he says, “I wouldn’t let you climb all over me at the beach, either.” 

“Why not?” Because he’s already like the ocean, though maybe he doesn’t know that because he isn’t high. 

The couch shifts, sinking briefly like a boat when someone gets in, but it’s just Hardison sitting down at the far end. Parker extends a foot into his hands so he can pull himself farther in, but he stays where he is. He starts rubbing her foot, though, and mmmm. The muscles curl up immediately like cats looking out a window at everything.

Eliot sighs again, waves rolling over the sand, but this one is sad and gusty and clouds coming over the sun. “Parker, you know that you’re not usually...”

“Snuggly?” Hardison fills in.

Parker hears the snap of Eliot’s hand slapping Hardison’s shoulder lightly. Even that sounds sad. “I was going to say affectionate, but sure.”

“Of course I know,” Parker says, pushing off Eliot’s lap to sit in the empty space between him and the arm of the couch. It’s much colder in here with him frowning at her. “That’s why I have to do it now, while I can.”

Now both of them are frowning. Parker folds her legs in front of herself. Her skin is still warm, but it’s the only warm thing in the room.

Hardison speaks first. “You know that if you want – hugs, and stuff, you can just ask for them.”

“But most of the time, I don’t know how to ask.” Now even their frowns are sad, and it makes Parker want to cry. “And then I do it wrong and things get weird.”

“We can handle weird,” Hardison says. And then Eliot looks at him, and Parker would think they were talking and she just can’t hear it but their mouths aren’t moving. At least, she doesn’t think so. Drugs are weird.

“Hugging,” Eliot clarifies. “Sometimes. But not when we’re working.”

Parker feels herself frowning now, as if the skin of her face was getting too heavy to hold up. She’s no good at rules. “What about when we’re talking about a job, but aren’t doing anything yet?”

“That’s working,” Eliot says, at the same time Hardison says, “That’s fine.”

And they look at each other again, only this time with eyebrow wiggles and their mouths definitely move. Hardison eventually puts up his hands. “It’s fine if you hug me,” he says. “Apparently, Eliot’s got boundary issues.”

“Somebody’s gotta be professional around here.”

Parker tentatively reaches a hand out across Eliot’s lap toward Hardison, who takes it immediately. His hand is warm, the fingers wrapping around hers and holding on tightly.

“Hugs now?” Parker asks. Hardison’s fingers say yes, but she’s not sure about Eliot until he leans back to stretch his arm along the back of the couch. He rests his hand gently on her shoulder, tiny feathers tickling softly against her skin.

Parker grins at both of them and climbs back into Eliot’s lap, pulling Hardison into hers as she goes. Eliot grumbles about being on the bottom of the cuddle pile, but they’re billy-goat grumbles again, and Hardison is warm and solid in her arms.


End file.
